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Clean Coal

On a cold and cloudy day, billowing steam from the giant 2,250 megawatt coal-fired Navajo Generating Station gives the impression that this otherwise pristine desert landscape just outside Arizona’s Glen Canyon Recreation Area is really an industrial wasteland. On a clear day, though, the steam and fog dissipate to reveal majestic red rock buttes and a yellowish band of smog drifting downwind from the plant as far as the eye can see.

What you see in this photo is steam. The photo I wanted, but did not get, was of our first sighting of the plant. No steam, just a long trail of yellowish smog hovering over an otherwise deserted landscape.

Bletch!!! Did they really have to put the smokestacks right where they’d be most visible next to the buttes? I hate to see pollution hanging in the air, and there are such good scrubbers and cleaners available it seems like we should be able to do better. Clean coal — what a misnomer! But at least we’re not living in Beijing …. right?

Hi Betty. The Navajo station is “scrubbed” for pollutants; as much as is required by the EPA at least. So I was surprised to see the degree to which airborne pollutants were still visible from such a facility.

Great picture but I’m not sure I’d call it ‘clean’. Even if it is just steam that we see, what about the huge volume of CO2 also being released.
I know it’s a cloudy day in the picture but how many sunshine hours does Arizona get? I’m sure photovoltaic arrays and wind turbines would be just as effective if the political and economic will was there (not just the usual vested interests).

Clean coal is an oxymoron. If we had started doing something in the 1970s when we first had long lines in gas stations, imagine where we could be now? Brazil has a fascinating story to tell – I do not know the data without searching but they have almost complete independence from fossil fuels by using switchgrass as a bio-fuel. This weed is not in the food chain so there is no effect on crop prices. Seems as if we could do something similar with Kudzu (the scourge of the south) that can grow 18 inches per day and also would not affect crop prices. Using corn has caused a price increase so we need something we do not eat!

Many people still don’t seem to understand the connection between coal-fired plants and the fact that virtually every lake in the contiguous 48 states is so toxic with mercury fish consumption advisories have been put into place. See your state’s Department of Natural Resources pages or Fish and Wildlife website for more information.

I believe that the coal for the Navajoh plant comes from Black Mesa, not too far away (though the Hopi would prefer that the coal stay in the mesa… that is another element of being culturally clean). The degree of “cleanness” of coal depends on how much carbon is in the stuff and how many other impureities, especially sulfur are released with burning. That physics is beyond me, though I heard an explanation once. Something to do with adding neutralizing chemicals that bound up the nasty stuff in “scrubbers”. In the USA, the cleanest coat is in the Dakotas. Living in WV, we hear a lot about clean coal technology being researched. That is because we have lots of sulfur in our coal viens. Another issue about clean coal, is not the coal itself, but how close it is to the power plant. The further that you have to transport it, the more energy (usually diesel fuel in trains and ships) is used. Another irony of WV coal is that while our local politicians talk about “bringing US energy independence” through mining, most of our coal is so unclean that we send it to China. That is a long way to transport it. The smoke then crosses back over the Pacific toward our western coasts. There’s my rant!
Oscar